1. The results. The Senate Intelligence Committee is releasing the results of a 5½-year review of CIA interrogations of terrorist suspects in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The 525-page report concludes that the interrogations were more brutal than the CIA had previously admitted — "in some cases amounting to torture," according to committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. The report is an executive summary of a larger, 6,700-page report that remains classified.

2. Main conclusions. The report concludes that in order to get approval for the program, the CIA provided false information about the interrogations to the White House, Congress, the Justice Department and others. The report even suggests the CIA misled President George W. Bush about the effectiveness of the interrogations.

3. Useful intelligence? The committee report concludes that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" did not provide any worthwhile intelligence. It also indicates that CIA officers themselves repeatedly questioned whether the interrogations were useful. The CIA was getting useful material from more traditional interrogations, the report concludes.

4. Mismanagement. The report says the CIA had a secret detention facility that was managed by a junior officer with no relevant experience. The committee concluded the facility kept few records of its operations, and senior officials had little information about what was going on there. According to the committee, "In November 2002, a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to a concrete floor died from suspected hypothermia at the facility."

5. Waterboarding. The committee believes that the best-known of the interrogation techniques — a simulated drowning known as "waterboarding" — may have been used more often that the CIA has previously acknowledged. One detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — often described as the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks — was waterboarded at least 183 times.

6. Obama's views. President Obama said the CIA has been and continues to be a pillar of the nation's security and a force for spreading democracy around the globe. But he said the agency clearly made mistakes and the release of the report is important for the nation to ensure that this type of interrogation never happens again.

7. There is more than one side to this story. GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Jim Risch of Idaho condemned the release of the report. "This report does not qualify as either serious or constructive. This was a partisan effort that divided members of the committee, and the committee against the people of the CIA," they wrote in a joint statement. "We voted against this report because it is flawed." Republicans on the committee issued a dissenting report concluding that some useful intelligence was in fact obtained from enhanced interrogations, and former CIA officials set up a website to defend the agency.